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Member since:
2009-01-09
The Linux world's greatest strength for IT people is simultaneously it's greatest weakness for the common user. There's a such thing as having too many options. For the average person, some decisions need to be make for them & the basic rule of thumb is this: "The more technical the choice, the less the user needs to even know that the choice exists." And why's this? Well, because the user usually doesn't care about technical choices, they don't really mean much to the common user. Nine times out of ten, if the user wouldn't understand either choice, then they really don't need to be exposed to the fact that there's an option. Obviously, the opposite is true for the average computer savvy techie user & on up towards the true gurus.
That's because all of the companies that didn't realize how wrong this was for users have already died out. There's a reason that Apple & Microsoft are still around today as OS providers & it isn't solely because of monopolistic practices. The same is true now as it has been since the beginning: "Normal people need to be provided solutions that work & they don't really care how or why these solutions work; they also don't usually care about the ideological differences behind each solution, it's all about the ROI value." Kernel panics == downtime == loss of money. When Windows does this, there's someone to point the finger at & they could potentially lose their job if it doesn't get fixed. This isn't always the case with Linux; there's a perpetual number of distros & there's always someone to tell you that you're free to try another one. Well, companies don't have time to rotate between the flavor of the month distro, since "DOWNTIME == LOSS OF MONEY."
We are a different breed of people. But, sometimes, we let our passions blind us from some of the obvious facts. There's the ideal way & then there's the practical way for the real world. They don't often match. At least you can see the difference & that's refreshing!